March 20, 2011

Now that the UN's Libya resolution has been passed and is being executed with such alacrity and zeal, I believe the mixture of jetfuel and cordite will soon give way to a more familiar smell. The odour of self-interest and corruption.

When Bush and Blair pushed for the invasion of Iraq, their ulterior motives were quite shallow. Aside from the issue of oil - which will always be a factor in all Middle East adventurism - it was said that Bush wanted to settle his father's score with Saddam. And Blair ... well he liked playing the statesman. Those were the charges. Personally I have always believed both to have been honourable men who were at least prepared to call evil by its true name.

However, this Libya thing is something else. And as the resolution's prime movers, Britain and France's motives will not stand up to close scrutiny.

Every corner of the British establishment was up to its neck in cahoots with the Gadaffi family. From Prince Andrew to Lord Mandelson, to the grubby deal to release the Lockerbie bomber. Arms deals, oil deals ... the billions flowed. But as soon as Britain sided with the rebels, the Libyan dictator threatened to "tell all".

More recently David Cameron's leadership has been a shambles. Locked into a farcical coalition with the minority Lib-Dem wets, he's thrown almost all his pledges and principles out of the window. Whether it was to rein-in immigration or the powers of the European parliament and its human rights charter for criminals, traffickers and terrorists ... nothing has changed.

Then there were the gaffes. When the Mubarak regime went into meltdown, Cameron's deputy Nick Clegg admitted he didn't even realise he was in charge of Britain during Cameron's absence. The Foreign Office bungled the evacuation of UK nationals, most notably from Libya where a team of its elite SAS troops surrendered to a bunch of farmers. Britain was reduced to begging for their release. Gadaffi intercepted the grovelling phone call and broadcast it to the whole world. Cameron's foreign secretary William Hague also gaffed in announcing that Gadaffi had fled to Venezuela. Last week, the media were speculating that he would step down as Foreign Secretary.

All this from the pitiful remnant of Britannia which once ruled the waves, but has now scrapped its last aircraft carrier and has barely enough aircraft to defend its own airspace. (Russian fighter bombers continue to test those defences and last month one Tuploev Bear bomber came within plain sight of the Scottish coast.)

Cameron needed three things. (1) To permanently silence Gadaffi (2) To create a diversion from all of these gaffes and (3) To turn himself into a statesman overnight.

What better than a small war made to order?

Similarly with France, the second biggest mover for the resolution and the quickest to launch air raids against Libya, even before its air defences had been Tomahawked.

Gadaffi had threatened to publicise 'how he had financed French president Sarkozy's election campaign'. Also Sarkozy - one of the great disappointments of our time - is plummeting in the opinion polls in a country with a large North African immigrant electorate.

Sarko's needs? (1) Also to silence Gadaffi and bomb any evidence of political corruption. (2) To show support for the rebels and thereby secure his own support on the African 'street' ... in Paris. (3) To turn himself into a statesman overnight.

Bush and Blair's Iraq motives seem pure white by comparison.

The other main mover was the Arab League. Another den of corruption. Great bedfellows for these self-interested sponsors of the UN resolution.

As with nearly all my posts, the background question must be: how does this affect Israel?

Badly I'm afraid.

As if Britain's Arabist and anti-Israel credentials were not clear enough, its ass has now been saved by the UN and is being kissed by the Arab League.

Anything that leaves anti-Israel politicians beholden to the anti-Israel UN is no good for the Jewish state.

The saddest thing of all is that good servicemen and women have to put their lives on the line for this kind of drekk..